By April 1970, the Grateful Dead were operating in a kind of inspired frenzy. Workingman's Dead was just weeks away from release — it would arrive in June — and the band was deep in the creative ferment that would also yield American Beauty before the year was out. But in the live setting, they hadn't softened one bit. This was still the ferocious, exploratory unit that had come out of the Haight: Garcia, Weir, Lesh, Pigpen, Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart locked into a twin-drummer configuration that gave their jams a physical, almost overwhelming weight. The Dead of early 1970 were doing something genuinely unique — acoustic sets on some nights, psychedelic warfare on others, sometimes both in the same evening. It was a band at maximum creative tension. The Field House at the University of Cincinnati isn't a room that gets name-checked in the same breath as Fillmore West or the Capitol Theatre, but that almost makes it more interesting. These mid-sized college field houses were a major part of how the Dead built their Midwest following, showing up in cities that didn't have a Fillmore equivalent and turning a gymnasium into something approaching church.
Cincinnati in early April 1970 would have still been shaking off the winter, students packing into a utilitarian sports facility that the Dead would promptly make their own. Of the songs documented from this show, The Other One stands out immediately. By 1970, "That's It for the Other One" had already shed its full Anthem of the Sun suite structure and was evolving into the free-ranging psychedelic juggernaut it would remain for decades — a vehicle for the kind of collective improvisation the Dead did better than anyone on the planet. A strong early-1970 version can be harrowing in the best possible way, Garcia and Lesh pushing each other into increasingly remote harmonic territory while the drummers lock into something nearly tribal. The fragment labeling "Pigpen Comes On Stage/Setting Up" suggests this recording preserves a candid, fly-on-the-wall moment before the music even properly begins — which for serious students of the era is genuinely valuable context. And Casey Jones, though it reached listeners as a studio track on Workingman's Dead, was already in the live rotation and had a raw edge in performance that the polished album version only hints at. The recording quality here is what you'd expect from an early audience tape of this vintage — don't come looking for hi-fi clarity, but do come listening for the energy. Sometimes rough sound and raw music are exactly the right combination.